Sight Unseen
by Dipenates
Summary: Post-ep for episode 2.08 "In Plain Sight". After Charlie reacts emotionally to a case in which a child is at risk, Charlie and Don get into a discussion about methods, responsibility, and objectivity. Rated for mature themes.


**Sight Unseen**

**A/N: **This is a post-ep for the episode 2.08 "In Plain Sight", in which an investigation of a meth lab yields some child pornography. This post-ep therefore tackles some mature themes.

**Thanks: **To reader Diogenes, who set me off thinking about the tensions between the methods used by the brothers on the show and where the objectivity comes from in some of the investigations Charlie is involved with. Hint: not always Charlie.

* * *

Don stood on his brother's patio and sipped his coffee. It was 7 am, but the bright California sun was already burning off the last of the dew from the lawn and promising clean heat after days of humidity.

Don sighed. The Lambeg case had been hard on all of the agents. Cases involving both child pornography and the death of an agent made everyone involved think the big, hard questions. But what was writhing in Don's stomach was how Charlie had handled himself; how personally he had taken it.

He thought about what his father had said. About the guilt Charlie felt about a childhood friend that he was sure, in retrospect, had been abused by her father.

"_It's not what he did, it's what he didn't do. He saw this girl, one time, and she was in trouble and he, um, he didn't save her. I mean, how the hell could he? He was only a child at the time. But, you know, being Charlie, he's got a big heart and he feels responsible."_

Don sighed again.

"I didn't realise that you'd stayed over." Charlie stood in the doorway to the patio, his own coffee cup in hand. He was still in his pyjamas, and slightly rumpled as if he'd only recently woken up.

"Yeah." Don tipped up his sunglasses so he could evaluate Charlie's expression.

"Did you sleep ok?" Charlie's tone was stiff as he joined his brother.

"Yeah. You?"

"Not so much. I dreamt about what might have happened if you hadn't listened to me. If I hadn't found that hard drive partition or realised that Jessica's father was trying to kidnap her." There was a beat of silence as both men realised what Charlie had said. "I mean Libby."

Don looked out into the garden. "Dad told me about Jessica and what you think might have happened to her."

Charlie snorted. "Of course he did."

"Charlie, it wasn't your fault."

"I did _nothing_, Don. Do you know how hard that is to live with?" Charlie's face was like stone.

Don huffed a laugh. "You're telling me about responsibility? I lost an agent yesterday, Charlie. I was ultimately responsible for an operation in which someone lost their life."

"She was a child, Don."

"And so that agent is expendable because he's an adult? Get real!" Don took a breath and lowered his voice slightly. "If you can't keep it together then you're a liability to any case you're working on."

Charlie's mouth fell open. "Are you serious? You're the one who wouldn't listen to me." His voice rose in pitch. "You're the one who nearly let that creep get access to his daughter again."

"What are you two arguing about so loudly they can probably hear you in Fresno?" Alan stuck his head out of the doorway.

Charlie raised an eyebrow. "Don was just telling me that I'm a liability to the FBI."

Alan turned a reproachful gaze on Don. "What's going on, Donnie?"

Don gestured impatiently. "I was trying to explain to Charlie the necessity of keeping a cool head. The Bureau can't afford a repeat of yesterday's performance."

"And _I _was just explaining how that creep would have hurt his daughter again if I hadn't found those images."

Don exhaled sharply. "Charlie, with the greatest of respect to you and to Jessica, we have experts in the FBI who spend their lives investigating these kind of crimes. Having untrained civilians making decisions about how cases are run is not the way things work."

"It worked out fine in the end." Charlie's voice was brittle.

Don laughed disbelievingly. "Don't tell me that you've turned into 'the end justifies the means' guy. Have some respect for yourself."

Alan frowned. "Don, that's enough."

Don gritted his teeth. "No, Dad, it really isn't. I'm sorry that Charlie blames himself for his friend's father molesting her, but he doesn't get to resolve his issues on the FBI's dime. Not only is it self-indulgent but it's dangerous. I was running a complex operation involving meth labs, drug trafficking, fugitives, kidnapping and child endangerment and Charlie was running around in the background playing _Nancy Drew and the case of the Runaway Pedophile_."

Charlie winced. "Jesus, Don! Have some fucking respect."

Don shot him a look. "Have some respect for what?

"What Libby went through. And Jessica. There's nothing worse than what happened to them."

Don's put his hand on his brother's arm. "Charlie, I'm sorry that I have to be the one to give you a wakeup call, but what you saw was the least repulsive child pornography I've ever seen."

He made his voice gentle. "I've seen shit you wouldn't believe, baby brother. I've had to stop seven year olds from unzipping my fly because that's what they've been trained to do to any new man they meet. I've found children's raped and mutilated bodies in cages in basements, where they were locked up like dogs in between tricks. I've seen –"

"Shut up." Charlie's voice was harsh. "I get it, ok?" He had tears running down his cheeks.

"Charlie –" Don put down his coffee cup and wrapped his arms around him. He flicked his head at Alan over Charlie's shoulder and Alan stepped inside, silently, looking backwards at his two boys.

"C'mon Charlie, it's ok." Don tried to disentangle himself from his brother, but Charlie was clinging to him as though he was drowning.

"You always had courage and I never did." Don could feel Charlie's breath on his neck.

"Shut up, man. That's not true."

"No, it is. If Jessica had been your friend then you would have done something." Charlie's voice cracked on every other word.

Don sighed. "Charlie, the truth is that a whole bunch of the kids we grew up with were in a bad place. You remember Johnny Henderson, who was in my grade? He never had any lunch. Always said he wasn't hungry but once we found out his Mom drank their food budget we found a way to make sure he didn't starve. Or Manuel Rodriguez, who played Little League with me. He always had way too many bruises, even for a kid who played sports, and we all avoided asking any questions about them."

He took a breath. "I wasn't any more courageous than you were. Kids just aren't equipped to handle that kind of thing."

Charlie stepped backwards so he could look Don in the eye. "Really?"

Don scanned his anxious face. "Yeah, really."

Charlie considered that. "I never thought it could get any worse than what happened to Jessica."

Don shrugged. "Comparisons are odious. I'm not saying that the things I've seen are _worse _exactly, just that you have to be aware of the realities of a kind of crime to investigate it effectively." He punched his brother lightly on the arm.

"It's like those algorithms you develop to analyse data. 'Garbage in, garbage out', right? In a case that involves child exploitation there are a whole bunch of possibilities that you as a civilian probably aren't aware of and wouldn't want to think about. That's my job and the job of my fellow agents."

"So back off your turf?" Charlie's face was unreadable.

"C'mon, Charlie, it's not about turf. It's about the right skills for each part of the job. The work you do is invaluable but I'm responsible out there and there are skills and knowledge that need to be applied to situations that you don't have. It's not an insult, any more than saying that you couldn't be a professor of French literature is."

"Well, if I'd learned French at a young enough age—" Charlie grinned at Don.

Don rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I'm sure we'd be arguing right now about whether your groundbreaking analysis of Gaston Laroux's early crime novels enabled you to comment on this case."

Charlie raised his eyebrows.

"What, can I not crack a book from time to time?" Don was mock-offended.

Charlie frowned. "Don, will you help me find Jessica? I need to talk to her."

Don scanned his face. "I can't give you any information that isn't in the public domain. It's unethical as well as being something they could have my badge for." He bit his lip. "Also, have you thought about whether Jessica wants to talk about this with you? I mean, she hasn't seen you since she was a kid. Is this really something you can just turn up on someone's doorstep and ask about?"

Charlie waved him off. "It's just something I need to do."

Don shrugged. "Ok, I'll do what I can. We have pretty powerful search tools, even if we're just searching data that's available to everyone."

"Thanks." Charlie's blotchy face was screwed up against the sun.

Don smiled at the sky and felt the warmth of the sun on his skin. "Hey, don't mention it. You're my brother."


End file.
